Week 52, Oh my word, it’s been a full year of training and there have been many ups and downs. Week 52 however was mainly on the up side. Despite the weather and many soakings I was able to stick to the week’s schedule.
It started Monday with a 14 mile endurance run. It was pouring with rain before I set off and I have to be honest, I nearly didn’t go, but I dug deep and put on my rain mac and off I went. I think the rain had gone through the mac before the end of the first mile. After the first three or four miles you almost forget it’s raining. The actual distance was just a little under 14.5 miles and I made it in 2 hrs 2mins which is a pretty good time for me. Perhaps the rain helped.
Tuesday was an hour in the gym on the weights followed by a fast pace 2 hour ride on the bike. Again I was getting wet.
Wednesday and it was the longest ride of the week at 3 hours. I had the Coastal Triathlon on the weekend so I didn’t want to burn myself out for that by doing silly mileage on the bike. At the same time I didn’t want to take the week off in preparation for the triathlon, it had to fit in to a full weeks training.
Thursday was a bit of a mix up day. With some better planning and a look at the weather at the beginning of the week I could have saved myself some soakings. Thursday was the first dry day of the week and where was I? In the gym and the pool.
One hour weights, fourty five minute spin on the gym bike, fifteen minute brick run on the treadmill then half an hour in the pool using upper body only.
A chilax day on Friday to preserve some energy for the Triathlon.
Saturday July 7th, Pembrokeshire Coastal Triathlon, 1500 m sea swim, 40 KM ride and a 10 K run .
I was quite excited about this event, mainly because I felt no pressure on it. I had put it at the end of an eleven hour training week so I was treating it as another training day. The weather settled down in time for race day and it was a beautiful morning, quite a strong breeze but dry. Around 290 competitors lined up for the start on the swim and as the claxon sounded we all ran to the sea. It was a very busy start with bodies everywhere. For the first one hundred metres you couldn’t take two strokes without swimming into someone. It began to even out after the first bouy but still wasn’t as relaxed as I would have liked. I managed to pull ahead of the group that I was battling with and gained a few metres of open space to swim in. The Velcro on my watch strap began to come unstuck and soon it was hanging off my wrist. I had to stop pulling and re-fit my watch which put me back in the middle of the pack that I had just got out of. This happened four times during the swim. (Need a new watch strap). I finished the swim in a time of 27.07 mins.
A very clean and swift transition and out onto the bike course. No drama on the route and overall I was very pleased with my pace, finishing the ride in 1 hr 32 mins.
Another smooth transition into the run and off across the beach. The first part of the run took us up the coast path out of Broad Haven and it was murder. Up hill, slippy with large puddles. Impossible to get any kind of rhythm and within half a mile I had a bad stitch which forced me to stop for a minute or two. I carried on up the path to the first water station at about 3 K. I took on some water, ignoring the energy drink and the stitch began to feel a lot better. Just after the station we were back on the road and I was able to settle into a rhythm. Still a lot of climbing to go but when we reached the 7 Km mark it was nearly all down hill. Overall it was a really tough run course which I finished in 59 minutes. Overall my time was 3hours 2 mins.
I had an hour and a half to get home and changed then I was off to work, how about that.
This diagram shows how the years training has been broken up into the various disciplines. Each column represents the hours in each sport.
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